Time’s up for the Yes2Rail blog, which I launched on June 30, 2008 as a paid consultant on Honolulu's elevated rail project. Yes2Rail’s August 13, 2012 post was its last following the author's move to Sacramento, CA. You’re invited to read four-plus years of information-packed entries, many of which are linked at our “aggregation site.” Look for the paragraph with red copy in the right-hand column, below. Mahalo for all the positive comments Yes2Rail received since its start.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Yes2Rail is nearing its end
as a Honolulu rail project communications tool, so we’re giving it a new look for the
final three weeks before Drop-Dead Day, August 16th.

The main reason we’re out
the door, it seems, is because a minority of City Council members thinks we’ve
been “unethical” in commenting on mayoral candidate Ben Cayetano’s
transportation plans.

To them, commenting on those
plans and comparing them against the rail project is the same as “criticizing”
the candidate. Maybe only sitting politicians see it that way and prefer a
sanitized approach to examining the option proposed by Mr. Cayetano.

Yes2Rail has been
communicating about Honolulu rail for four years now, including what opponents
offer as allegedly better alternatives. They include Cliff Slater’s and Panos
Prevedouros’ high-occupancy toll roads, as well as Mr. Cayetano’s new plan to
resurrect bus rapid transit from its failed iteration under the Harris
Administration.

If those plans don’t measure
up, Yes2Rail isn’t going to look the other way and ignore them. That would
amount to caving in to criticism instead of standing up and saying what needs
to be said.

The Spot

Mr. Cayetano’s newest radio
commercial, posted online by Civil Beat, begins by asking the listener, “Are you stuck in traffic right now?
If you are, let me ask you something: Will you take rail when it’s completed
ten to fifteen years from now?”

Barely 8 seconds into it,
the spot goes off the rails by suggesting the rail project won’t be completed
until 2022 or 2027. For the record, the project is scheduled to be fully
operational along its entire 20-mile line in eight years, and nothing but
wishful thinking by opponents backs up a longer time frame.

The spot then tells the
listener to “take a look at the guy in the car to the right of you. Do you
think he will use rail after the five billion dollar project is complete? Or
what about the person on the left of you? Do you think they will use rail? If
you don’t think so, you are correct.”

'You Are Correct'?

Just like that – you are
correct? Doesn’t it depend on where you’re driving when you’re creeping along
so slowly or stopped in traffic that you can safely look all around you? Of
course it does, yet the spot's message is that nobody is going to ride the train.

And that is not correct. Try
asking that question while sitting in traffic on the H-1 freeway
between Kapolei and town. That’s where rail will make a different – not principally on Kalanianaole Highway in East
Honolulu or on the trans-Koolau highways bringing in cars from the Windward Side.

Yet rail opponents,
including the mayoral candidate who vows to kill the project, want you to
believe rail would be a failure if only 2 percent of drive-time commuters
switch to rail. They want you to believe rail is allegedly supposed to be for everybody, which is preposterous.

Oahu’s biggest congestion
problem obviously is in the east-west corridor between the ewa plain communities and town. That’s where rail will make the biggest difference by attracting commuters to get off the roads and highways and start taking the train.

The radio spot completely
ignores that point, and this one, too: Even if you don’t ride the future train,
your driving experience will be better. Vehicle hours of delay with rail in
place by 2030 will be reduced by 18 percent – islandwide! Yes2Rail looked into this point three weeks ago today and provided links to the the Final Environmental Impact Statement’s
discussion on this significant congestion-reduction benefit.

Wanna Ride TheBus?

The spot concludes by
pitching a detail-less bus rapid transit plan that would cost less.

We can only speculate on
what the answers would be if you lowered your car window while parked on the
freeway and asked your neighbor if they’d rather be riding TheBus.

People who drive their own
personal vehicle already have made a decision to notride
TheBus, and there’s no reason to believe they’d flock to a less personal and less attractive kind
of transportation unless there were a perceivable up-tick in the experience.

As good a system as Honolulu
has, TheBus doesn’t measure up to what mode-switchers want, and residents who
switch and start taking the train will be doing it for a couple primary
reasons:

One, Honolulu’s elevated
rail system will avoid all traffic congestion, unlike any form of bus transit,
which somewhere along the route must operate in the mix of other traffic. And
two, they’ll save time and money in the process. Do the math.

Ignoring this deceptive
radio message – even in Yes2Rail’s final three weeks – would simply be a cop-out. If a politician wants to take us to task for telling
the truth, let him or her do so, but it would seem pretty peculiar.

6 comments:

Roy Kamisato
said...

That two drivers out of one hundred drivers is a variation of the misleading claim Ben Cayetano made when he said traffic will only be reduced by 1.5%. As Rick Blangiardi from HawaiiNewsNow replied to Ben's misleading ad, why not add in the traffic from the west coast to make your numbers even more convincing.

Ben's plans are to fix the sewer's , road's and start up a betterl traffic solution with BRT. With rail our children will be paying a heavy price to maintain two system's , rail and the bus. Ask yourself this question, why are people still buying new car's , to park them in there garage? We as american's love our car's and our freedom and I'm sorry to say but we won't get out of our car's no matter what system we go with. 5.5 billion Rail or 1.2 billion BRT. I would rather be in traffic today then see my children still stuck in traffic and paying a heavy price for something we hope someone else will use. I'm just replying to anonymous and I hope you print this on your site so anonymous can read it. Aloha.

The rail will not bankrupt the city. Rail in fact saves the city money when compared to an equilivant bus system. It would be more accurate to say that Cayetano's BRT system will force the city to raise property taxes and would be more likely to bankrupt the city than rail.

To Anonymous 2 and 3 above: Of course I print comments that disagree with our point of view. You're entitled to yours, but it's as point of view in our opinion that's dismal and devoid of inspiration for a better way of life. Infrastructure costs money, and the current generation -- like all generations -- pays for improvements made to benefit earlier generations. But here's a point we're missing: OUR current generation seems to have skated past some of the infrastructures that should have been built -- sewer improvements, for example. We got a pass, and our children can blame us for not stepping up when we should have. And if we sentence them unending and growing congestion with no way around it for all the decades of this century, then we'll REALLY be tagged as the worst generation. Take the train, avoid congestion. It's as simple as that, and who's to say where your kids will live anyway? Maybe they'll be among the "lucky we ride" group.

This Isn't Political

Yes2Rail is a blog about the Honolulu rail transit project, which has become the key issue in this year’s mayoral race. We comment on the candidates’ plans to address Oahu’s growing congestion problem and whether those plans could meet the need as well as elevated rail can and will. That’s not the same as criticizing the candidates, and we urge our readers to recognize the difference.

Another red-light runner meets Denver at-grade train, 6.13.12

Honolulu rail will be elevated, with zero possibility for accidents like those shown in this column in cities with at-grade systems. Visit our "aggregation site" for much more on why elevated rail is the only reasonable way to build Honolulu rail.

What riding the train will avoid

Bus Accident Aftermath on H-1

'Black Tuesday'--9/5/06 Crash Produced Nightmare Commute

Typical H-1 Traffic

About Me

After five years of active-duty service as an Army officer with duty stations in West Berlin and South Vietnam, reported and edited for newspapers and broadcast stations (including all-news radio) in Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and Honolulu. Covered Honolulu city government for the Honolulu Advertiser and KGMB-TV. Served on Congressman Cec Heftel's staff in Honolulu and Washington, then managed corporate communications and was Hawaiian Electric Company's spokesman for nearly a decade. A communications consultant for 19 years before moving to California in 2012. Launched, produced and hosted Hawaii Public Radio's "live" weekly "Energy Futures" public affairs program in 2009-10. Authored books on The National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific ("Punchbowl" 1982) and on the decline of standard grammar in business and society ("Me and Him Are Killing English!" 2007). Now an information officer with the California Department of Water Resources.